16 Responses to “What is Behavioral Economics?”

“The presumed irrationality of the public is a pattern running through
many, if not most or all, of the great crusades of the anointed in the
twentieth century–regardless of the subject matter of the crusade or the
field in which it arises. Whether the issue has been ‘overpopulation,’
Keynesian economics, criminal justice, or natural resource exhaustion, a
key assumption has been that the public is so irrational that the superior
wisdom of the anointed must be imposed, in order to avert disaster. The
anointed do not simply ‘happen’ to have a disdain for the public. Such
disdain is an integral part of their vision, for the central feature of
that vision is preemption of the decisions of others.”

How does behavior affect economic decisions and influence how policy is
made? I’m taking a class at Duke with professor Dan Ariely. Are you the
default? Stay tuned for my write up on how defaults affect you, the world
you are in and the decisions you think you make.﻿

“In his senior year of high school, he was active in Hanoar Haoved
Vehalomed, an Israeli youth movement. While preparing a ktovet esh (fire
inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the flammable materials
he was mixing exploded, causing third-degree burns over 70 percent of his
body.[3] In his writings Ariely describes how that experience led to his
research on “how to better deliver painful and unavoidable treatments to
patients.”[4]

I was thinking of becoming a psychology major but for some reason I keep
coming back to economics from when I was a high school student. I like how
psychology gives me the the know how for understanding how people really
act in a world like ours but this sounds interesting! How would you go
about entering this kind of field?

yes. the rational assumptions in classical economic theory really need some
tweaking; we learn from cognitive psychology and critical thinking,
prejudices and biases cloud our so-called rational judgments and
decision-making all the time; simply put, its a safe assumption to make
that humans are irrational by default, and only rational with applied
effort and under the right conditions, notably, when the mind is very calm
and at ease.

Cool vid. Guy needs a new tie. Anyways, most of America acts like Homer
Simpson because we are never taught in school about when things end. We are
so concerned about picking people up when they fall, that when you actually
hit rock bottom or financial collapse we just look for the next handout or
bailout.